Witty Challenge - Coolest Woman on the Planet

A few days ago I was thinking about where my website was going and a friend challenged me to profitability on our respective sites. We've both been writing for a while, but my sites have been more profitable, while she's better published. Ahem... At least in fiction realms!

So what to do to maximize my profits and invite more readers? I considered for a few moments doing a pay per read, all of about two seconds... I really think you get more if you're reading for content than for pay. So, that didn't last long. Then I considered the options.

Determining the Coolest Woman on the Planet, and actually having a contest to win the award, might be okay - IF I wanted to give up the title. I don't. I earned it through SEO and I'm keeping it, and I don't really plan to share it --- other than a visit now and then by a GUEST Coolest Woman on the Planet at my blog by the same name. So, I'm still toying with the idea of giving away a GUEST Coolest Woman on the Planet. But, in order to do that, I'd have to invite people to nominate the Coolest Woman on the Planet somehow, and that's when I came up with this post idea...

If you have someone you'd like to nominate as the Coolest Woman on the Planet - add your nomination in a comment beneath this post, give me a NAME, contact information (via your confidential disclosure of email) and any pertinent information as to WHY she's the Coolest Woman on the Planet.

If we do this right, we might even have to do a Pageant where the runners up would be the Coolest Woman in the World, the Coolest Woman in the Universe, and perhaps the Coolest Woman under the Sun...

There is, by the way, a really awesome gift for the Coolest Woman on the Planet Contest. Right now, it's a Coffee Basket from The Coffee Clatter. But, if there's enough women nominated, the prize may get a lot better. Nominate your winner and let's see who gets the basket. I'll be putting it together soon and taking a photo to upload either here or at the Coffee Clatter. (Maybe both.)

Baseball Cards - The Collection of Purpose

Several years ago, my boys started collecting Baseball Cards. At the time, I figured it was an innocent pass-time. They'd enjoy the cards, eventually their cards would wind up in the toy box, tossed aside and probably tossed out ultimately. Big deal! I could deal with a few baseball cards scattered over the floor. At least they weren't legos I was stepping on in the middle of the night.

Then... It happened. One of my friends shared with them the value of trading baseball cards on ebay. Whoohoo! They're entrepreneurs. It's a great idea, and I actually loved the thought of them trading on ebay, it would teach business skills, advertising, and other skills for real world learning. I encouraged it.

Then along came the rules of the process and they must be 18 to trade on ebay. Okay, we can do that. I'll just sign up and do the actual trading and let them have the cash, etc. from their trades.

One step at a time, we had to actually begin making profits first. That's done. Here come the profits and we're off. The race is on. We sold remarkable numbers of cards, and I seriously thought that was the end of the collection. Out came the next box...

Five shoe boxes later, I finally take a breath and ask how many more cards we have to trade... "Oh, just another three or four boxes, Mom."

My deep breath became a sigh. "Go get them." I suggest, thinking we'd have three or four SHOE boxes. No such thing... There were three or four shoe boxes in EACH box of baseball cards, and there we had it... Boxes, and boxes, and more boxes of baseball cards they'd collected at every fair, every police holiday, every parade, and every time they'd had an opportunity to gather up Baseball cards, they'd collected the cards and began organizing them into groups of cards. Some for teams, some groups for All Star Players, and other various groups of cards. We'd been selling cards for more than six months and there were TONS more to sell. In fact, I could literally see us selling baseball cards for the next eleven years and still having more to sell. The collection was unending.

So, then the thought came to me... I wonder if we're under-selling any of these cards, so... I started searching for valuable baseball cards. Don't you love the Internet. It's so easy to search out this kind of valuable information.

We had many cards that were worth way more than we'd been selling them for, and I thought we could do better than we'd been doing with the cards. So, I proposed a different marketing strategy to the boys. They liked it.

I'm not about to disclose that strategy here, but I am going to tell you that within the next several weeks, we'll be presenting some interesting sales techniques for marketing Baseball Cards. And I'll be sorting through those cards to find out how many of them are Baseball cards, how many are Beanie Baby Cards and how many are some other kind of card that hasn't yet hit the hot market --- who knows, we may be able to create a NEW hot market....

It's all in the marketing strategy, baby!

Washed up on the Beaches of Kansas

You may think the world is your oyster, but when people start yakking about the Beaches of Kansas, you've gotta wonder where they're coming from. Last fall, N.T. Betz spoke at the Fall into Publishing Conference about the thrills of beating dinosaur bones out of the Great Plains, referencing the Oceans of Kansas. Little did I know it would inspire much of the winter writing programs in which I participated.

This morning, when I awakened to a raging blizzard, my email account was filled to the brim with tributes to the snow. Except for one...

Don Buck of Hasty, Colorado sent a quick message referencing the breeze in the Palms, sunny bright morning, and the easy of plucking a fresh pineapple for breakfast outside his home. Balmy days and sea gulls edged their way into the day and the beaches of Kansas sprang forth. Who knew a blizzard on the prairie could render such delightful thoughts of sand, flip flops and bikini clad figures playing in the sun?



I gazed out the window at snow blowing from the top of the house next door, filling up my yard with drifts tall enough to bury a pine tree, and wondered if there's truly a warm corner of the planet at this very moment? I'm sure there is, but right now, at my house the shivers indicate chilling breezes, cold floors, snow blowing at the windows, and life in a Colorado winter.

So, the question is, what do you do on a cold snowy Colorado day?

How about twitter? Follow me at http://twitter.com/janverhoeff

It's fun, it's easy, and there's a ton of people on there, yakking about the weather.

Global Warming or Merely the Coming of the Next Season?

It's March! In case you haven't noticed as you scoop through layers of snow and ice in some parts of the country, the rest of us have been basking in the warmth of an unusually tepid spring. I toy with the concept of gardening, about this time of year, dancing through the early mornings with a thought of raising flowers again, or wondering if they're going to spring forth in all their industrious beauty, as they have in years past and know that I probably don't have to do anything for the bulbs that have lain dormant for the past many winters. Each spring, they rally and surface just in the nick of time, administering their love and joy of abundant spring weather. But what about the drought?

In my nearly fifty years of living (it's funny how I enjoy the sound of that), I have learned that drought follows the floods of moisture and time settles most of the dust that rages across the Colorado prairies. Though we tend to experience more drought here, than rain, the reality is, this is where we live. Drought is part of that existence, because that's what happens on the Great Plains. You don't expect blizzards and gully washers in the Sahara desert, so why would you expect them in the great plains? In reality, those of us who live here have become accustomed to the ebb and flow of seasons. We adjust and enjoy the passing of time, replete in the promise of the next season.

I wonder however, at the concept of Global Warming. Many of the people who have determined that our earth is warming beyond natural temperatures have lived on the planet longer than I. So, do they honestly believe the natural rise and fall of temperatures indicates global warming? Or.. And this is what I believe more likely, are they persistently spouting rhetoric to draw attention and build wealth? The dance of nature offers so much, can you imagine living in fear of nature and using that fear to grow wealth on the faces of other people's fears? The gravity of such an act causes me to wonder about human nature.

I believe living green is a good policy and I'm even seriously considerate of the size of my foot print. However, I'm also acutely aware of the policy of do as I say, not as I do, of which Al Gore and his component rookies participate. Mr. Gore doesn't travel cheap, and his home is a far cry from modest. Has his footprint gotten too big for his britches? Is he, perhaps, crying wolf a bit too loudly while continuing to play in the fire?

The changing of the season makes for happiness, spouting a breath of fresh air, warmth aside, the season coming promises great abundance. I'll be enjoying it.

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think of our strange weather patterns.

Holy Moly He Said It!!!

My son, the writer kind of son, who has been editing Twilight as he reads it, just spoke the words every parent deigns to hear. "Mom, it's true, the movie isn't nearly as good as the book." Of course, the book has all ready been published, so it probably matters not one whit that he thinks she used the word "and" way more than necessary. Imagine a 14 year old who recognizes mal-formed sentence structure? Or a kid, any where in the universe, who understands that -ly words are merely flecks of universal dust in the whole of planetary justice.

I could write a whole book on -ly words alone, of course, with the help of my good buddy and friend, Oris George, who abhors them even more than he dislikes pink and cute.

Of course, you realize how important this is that my son is reading a book as thick and discriminate as Twilight, in the first place. He should be, as all tweens should be, playing video games with no earthly awareness that books exist. However, it's important to note in this most sacred of all moments that this particular tween is home educated. You know, he's on the EDGE of, delinquent, verging near the site of hysterically unsocialized and contaminated by parental impressionism. Never mind the fact that he's got a myspace page, a facebook page, and his own blog, not to mention numerous friends whom he hangs with whenever he has the opportunity. And (I'm certain he'd comment on the use of that conjunction, as well), he's already a published author with another book in progress.

Tuesday night, my older son and I attended a meeting of Constitution stuff, it's called a class of some kind and we both get a real thrill out of attending the class. He, because it's about the constitution, politics, war, and presidents who didn't do what they were supposed to do. Me, because I'm studying criminal justice and the two topics just fit together like all-bran and diapers, and nobody cares which one came first.

During the discussion Tuesday night we got around to talking about Federalism, the Federal Reserve and all the guck that came along with President Teddy and his attempt to prove himself dictator of the nation by running for term number four. (I say, thank God for term limits.) Sean's bit of wisdom had a room full of men nearly speachless. For a 15 year old (home educated) kidlet to spark that much fire into a conversation takes knowledge. He rarely holds back. He snaps out that information as if he knows what he's talking about, confidently and sure of himself. And, he's right on the money (or in the case of Federal Reserve Notes, Gold.)

So, I've nearly broken my arm this week patting myself on the back for raising such fine and upstanding young men... and my daughter calls.

Mom, I've got a problem. (Does anyone besides me see the Enterprise burning?) She's 23 and quite contentedly self-confident enough to get herself out of most any problem a young woman might find herself in, except for this one. "I can't get the key out of my ignition."

"Jiggle it."

"Mom!!! You think, I didn't try that before I called you?"

"Humor me. Jiggle it." So, she does (I heard the keyring rattling).

"Nothing."

"Okay, jiggle it, turn the car on, turn it back to lock and then try to pull it out." She tries.

"Nothing."

"Okay, push it in, jiggle it and follow those steps in reverse." I suggest, "are you sitting in the seat?"

"Yes. Nothing."

"Take it to the nearest dealership and have them check it, you probably need an ignition switch."

"Mom, I have work to do."

"I know."

"Okay."

So, she takes her car to the dealership and they reach in, pull the key out, put it back in and jiggle it, pull it out, put it in, pull it out, and it's all working fine.

"Mom, you're not going to believe it." She's on the phone again.

"It works fine."

"How did you know?"

"It always happens. Get back to work before you get fired!"

It's page 37 of Twilight and my son is still counting "ands" in the book. "Mom, I loved the movie, and this writer is really good --- well, except for the fact that every other word practically is the word AND or has an -ly on it." There's a long slow sigh and I'm not sure what he's going to say next... "I really do like the book better than the movie, you're right. I should read more books."

Holy Moly, He said it!!!!

A Charger of a Different Kind

I'm not a really big sports fan, but this story captured my attention. John Elway definitely had a way of winning, and more than just on the football field. He's been active enough in the state of Colorado to cause a few ripples in the political spectrum (not that we agree on much), and he's definitely a big enough name to capture the attention of the media.

When a guy with that kind of power puts out energy to help encourage a kid, it speaks to my heart. For that reason, I wanted to share this story with my readers. He's a charger of a different kind and if he ever stops by here, I'd like him to know I appreciated his efforts in this case.

A Quote to Live By - Winston Churchill

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."
~ by Winston Churchill